Cracklin' Bread (Pioneer)

History

"Cracklin' Bread: (Pioneer.)" is recorded in Martha McCulloch-Williams's "Dishes & Beverages of the Old South" (1913), and it is short enough to quote whole: "Sift a pint of meal, add a pinch of salt, then mix well through a teacup of cracklings — left from rendering lard. Wet up with boiling water, make into small pones, and bake brown in a quick but not scorching oven."

Cracklings are what remains after lard is rendered, so the bread exists because nothing from a hog killing was wasted. The book gives an unusual amount of space to that process elsewhere, describing the plantation slaughter and noting that "though the plantation force was commonly amply sufficient for the work of slaughter, owners indulged their slaves by asking help of each other." That sentence is the author's own, and it identifies whose work the rendering was.

The historical record does not document a specific earlier origin for this particular bread.

McCulloch-Williams was a white writer born near Clarksville, Tennessee, who grew up on a plantation before the Civil War; the book's dedication is "to our Mammys," and its affection for that world goes unexamined in it.

Ingredients

• 1 pint cornmeal
• salt
• 1 teacup cracklings
• boiling water

Instructions

1. Sift the cornmeal and add a pinch of salt. Mix the cracklings (rendered lard scraps) well through the dry mixture. Wet up with boiling water until the dough comes together. Form into small pones (cornbread cakes). Bake in a quick but not scorching oven until brown.